


The Taste of Dreams Realized

by gabolange



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: On falling in lust.
Relationships: Jean Beazley/Lucien Blake
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	The Taste of Dreams Realized

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the blakesecretsanta2019 exchange on Tumblr for it-is-bugs. The prompt was _The first time Jean became aware of Lucien in 'that way.'_ I hope this suits! Merry Blakemas!
> 
> With thanks to pellucid for the beta read. Any outstanding errors are my own.

***

i. 

A week before his father died, the young Doctor Blake had swept in, a flourish of wet raincoat and damp cases, dripping onto the floor of his childhood home as if he were still in short pants and allowed to make a mess. He had no manners to speak of. “Take me to him,” he said, and tracked puddles all the way to the old man’s sickbed. Jean wonders what the father thought of that: prodigal son returned, soggy and grim, just in time to see him shuffle off the mortal coil.

Jean learns quickly that the young Doctor Blake— _Lucien_ , he continues to insist—has no care for the rules, household or otherwise. He consented to take up his father’s practice with a graceless shrug, and has proceeded to reorder the office, the patient files, the scheduling book, the waiting room, as if nothing his father had ever touched might remain in place. Jean wonders if her job, her person, might be subjected to the same disordered treatment.

“Dear old dad had a certain way of doing things,” Lucien says as he pulls open cabinets and tosses items onto the desk. “It isn’t mine.”

“I can see that,” Jean replies, leaning down to save a scrawled note from the floor.

“If it is going to be my practice,” Lucien begins, glancing around a room that has not changed in Jean’s ten years in the house. 

“It should be a place you can work,” Jean finishes, because she can concede that, at least. She may miss the old doctor—his coughing laugh, the gentle smile he saved for his sickest patients, the skeptical eyebrow he raised when she insisted he would survive what became his final illness—but she can see that the office must not suit his son. She supposes she understands; Jean could not work well in her mother’s kitchen, where everything was just off from where it would have been had she arranged it herself.

He grins in response, and she realizes she has never seen him smile. For all they call him _young Doctor Blake_ she can see the years in that smile, the way his eyes crinkle and the rest of his face follows, creased and well-worn. He is a handsome man, she thinks, or might be without the periodic scowl and the perpetual drink.

Lucien turns away from her, back to some file he is sure to disrupt, and she looks him over. He works in his waistcoat and tie, but has rolled his sleeves to the elbows. His hands and arms are strong, though from what work Jean does not know. She follows the line of his body beneath his expensive suit, takes in a build more suited to chopping wood than writing prescriptions. Well. He certainly isn’t trouble to look at.

He looks back up at her and rather than drop her eyes, she meets his gaze as if to say, _I wasn’t staring_. He flashes a smile at her again, and as they work, Jean thinks it is lucky she doesn’t like him.

**

ii. 

Lucien writes: he is coming home from China after three months away.

Jean’s heart quickens as she reads the letter, and she rests her palm over her breast as if to quiet it. What is that? 

Surely, she is just pleased he will be coming home, pleased things will be getting back to normal. Not that there’s any normal with Lucien Blake, but these last few months have been filled with loss: Danny’s departure, Nell Clasby’s death. Lucien’s return will at least bring some life back into the quiet house. Yes, that’s it. 

She knows she’s missed him, despite herself. She hadn’t been expecting to, not after the horrible weeks before his departure, after all the hell he’d raised. The hospital board, the Consul General—it had been a relief when he’d left.

And yet, Jean found herself making too much for supper with Danny gone and Mattie so often away in Melbourne for her social work classes. Or worse, Jean would skip dinner altogether, pretending to be content with toast and tea when she couldn’t stomach cooking only for herself. The house is empty without Danny and Mattie bickering over nothing, and emptier still without Lucien’s raucous laugh and inquiring mind. 

She is glad to have some of them back now—though Mattie will leave when her course is complete, and Lucien, well. She hopes Lucien will stay. She wonders what he has learned in China, if it is the kind of news that will have him packing his bags for Asia, never to be seen again, or the kind that will hold him close to Ballarat. She doesn’t know what to hope, except that he stays. She has, Jean must acknowledge, grown accustomed to having him underfoot.

But her heart races as she reads the letter and again as she drives toward the station to meet his bus. Lucien, it thumps, and she purses her lips at its lack of complacency. Her heart should know its folly, that if it has formed an attachment to Lucien it will soon be disappointed by a drunken outburst or a boorish comment or a harebrained scheme or a plan to leave, again. 

Jean has tried to talk herself out of this attachment. It hasn’t worked, and she is starting to worry that it won’t. She knows too much, now, about the pain behind those outbursts and the misguided care that drives so many of those schemes. He could do so much good here, if only he would listen to her. If only he would _stay_.

It might be a pipe dream, that the clever parts of Lucien might see more light than the frustrating ones, but how she has dreamed—.

She parks the car and tries not to imagine Lucien striding off the bus and into her arms. Or at least a kiss on the cheek, a pleased hello. She rolls her eyes and scolds herself: stop behaving like a schoolgirl with a crush, Jean Beazley. It isn’t becoming.

Her pulse jumps under her skin as she crosses the street to meet the bus.

**

iii. 

Lucien destroys dinner again. He explains—something about the chemical compounds in animal fat—but Jean isn’t listening. How can she, when Lucien is standing so close behind her, hands casually squeezing her shoulders, beard scratching against her cheek?

This has been happening more and more, these small moments between them, and every time she has to catch her breath. Not because he is being improper, she wouldn’t say that, but because when he touches her she is reminded of what it was like to be married. The husband who touches his wife like that—a quiet palm on the cheek, fingers resting gently in the crook of an elbow—he lives in a world of everyday affection, and has no reason to think his wife will mind.

Jean doesn’t mind. Hardly. She welcomes it, revels in the warmth of his body close to hers, and mourns the loss when he retreats to his office and leaves her to salvage their supper. There are sausages meant for tomorrow’s breakfast, and they will have to do. 

She doesn’t know when he started touching her. After Jack’s visit? After that terrible day with Ruth Dempster? When Lucien looked at her and said, _find that one thing you want for your future_ and searched her face like he hoped it would be him?

He hopes, she thinks, but would never press. But he makes his interest known, not in his friend or his widowed housekeeper, but in _Jean_ , a woman he likes to talk to and likes to touch. It has been too long since anyone felt that way about her—oh, she has had her dates and her proposals, but they are hardly the same as the attention of a man who doesn’t speak, but shows her what he wants in every move.

That day in the garden he held her hands and dried her tears and she thought he might kiss her. He is a better man than that, she knows, and it was hardly the moment. But now she thinks of it constantly, that he might press himself more closely and follow through. 

His lips would be dry, she thinks, and she knows the feel of his hands on her face, the way his thumb strokes her cheek, soft and gentle. She wonders what he would do if she pressed herself into the kiss, wrapped her arms around him, opened her mouth against his? The first time, he would be surprised to find her forward, but he would quickly learn. 

She could put a stop to it all, if she wanted. She would only have to step away from him, shrug a shoulder, and after that first flash of disappointment they would return to what they were. Doctor, housekeeper.

But no. Not when Lucien’s eyes follow her across the room, not when his hands twitch when he thinks of her. Not when his voice drops when he comforts her, when her breath catches at the thought of his raspy words in her ear for another forty years. 

_The one thing you want for your future_ , his voice echoes, and she smiles. “Lucien,” she calls. “Dinner’s ready.”

**

iv. 

She had let herself believe. And why not? They had walked out together in Adelaide, anonymous and unencumbered. He had kissed her and touched her and she had let him, reveling in the weight of his body against hers in the shadows of a deserted park bench, beneath the awning of an hours-closed shop, in a quiet back room of a little pub. They were young again, sneaking away from her son’s watchful gaze, necking like teenagers and sharing silly dreams.

It was not like that in Ballarat, not with Matthew laid up, not with the whole town watching them. But here in Ballarat, the dreams became unspoken plans. Whatever the future, they would spend it together.

But a knock on the door shattered that vision, and Jean wonders at her foolishness. Not to fall in love with a married man—she hadn’t known, he hadn’t known—but to fall in love at all. To try to be someone other than widow-housekeeper, the kind of person who had her place, and her station, and should have known better.

Her place, this little room at the top of the stairs, the only home she has known for over ten years. Mei Lin has moved into a hotel, but Jean knows it is only a matter of time before she will have to give up this room, this house, this life. She will have to give up Lucien in every way, and as she climbs into bed she cries to think of it.

What dreams did she have? To see Rome and Paris, but also to see Lucien laid out beneath her in this bed or another, to feel the skin of his chest under the palm of her hand, the pounding of his heart as his face contorted with pleasure she had given him. 

What dreams? His mouth against her breasts, not too softly, sucking and biting and coaxing her pleasure with tongue and teeth. His hands on her hip, fingers tracing the crease of her leg and then—.

She lets her hands wander over her body, following her dreams. Would she have to show him where to touch her? She scratches of nails against her neck. Would he know how to love her? She twists her nipple between her fingers. Would he listen when she said harder, faster, more? She dips her fingers between her legs and wishes for his—longer and thicker, an imagined touch made of love and not sadness.

She coaxes herself higher and wonders what they might have done together. Here she follows the same pattern she always has on these rare nights, capable enough at giving her body the pleasure it seeks, and remembers her dreams: Lucien’s voice, _come for me, darling_ , his weight at her back, his hands and mouth in places she cannot reach.

She falls and sleeps and wakes alone.

**

v. 

“I have an early morning mass,” Jean says, putting Lucien off, making excuses. Their future together will come, some day, but the path forward will be paved with many moments marked by her insistence on not here, not now, not yet. She intends to wait until they are married, not to make the same mistake twice, but it is growing harder to convince herself it would be a mistake. 

He wants her. It is in his gaze, in his frustration when she pushes him away. She feels it in the way he holds her against him, the desperation that surges through his grasp, as if he might change her mind or the world with a kiss. But he would never ask her for more than she will give, and that patience, his willingness to step back, to leave her to her cocoa and her God—that, as much as any of it, makes her consider giving in.

Why shouldn’t she? She knows the answers: the church, the divorce, the threat of a history that should not repeat. But they have given in to every other impropriety, and this one would be sacred, private. This one would be nothing more than the sealing of a promise already made and affirmed in every other way available to them.

She wants to show him she means to marry him, no matter the talk, no matter the church, no matter that she turns her back on him in the kitchen. She wants to show him she isn’t offended by the weight of him pressed against her body or by his proposition; quite the opposite: their future together will feature many nights of _something stronger._

Why should she wait for that faraway wedding night? Why shouldn’t she change into the nightgown she purchased for that very evening, and pretend this chilly evening is well-suited to seduction?

The new nightdress falls smoothly over her skin, wipes away the years since last she put on something like this for a man. She can imagine Lucien’s face when he sees it, sees her: shock and awe, then gratitude. She thrills to the promise of his whispered astonishment, the wonderment with which he will say her name when he sees her. 

_Jean_ , he whispers in her mind. He undresses her with his eyes and then his hands, quickly and without fuss. His bed is too small for both of them, but there will be space enough and more for how closely he will hold her, how he will insist on closing the smallest gap between them.

She puts on her best lipstick. It is meant to entice, to leave marks on skin usually kept hidden. Her breath catches at the thought of it, her mouth against his chest and hip, the way his heart will jump under her hands. And then—what next? She can barely tally the possibilities, and she wants every one. 

She wants, and she does not want to wait. She steadies herself and steps through the door.

**

vi. 

Lucien says, “I have waited for you for such a long time,” and marries her on a warm March afternoon. His words linger through dances and toasts, well-wishes and cheer, but it is not until the door to their suite at the club has closed behind them that Jean can respond. 

“I have waited for you, too” she says, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him down to her. She kisses him and whispers against his lips, “You have no idea for how long.” 

Perhaps one day he will ask her to say more, to tell him when she first wanted him, when she fell in love, when she decided to stay, but now his eyes darken and he sounds hoarse as he says, “Show me.” And so she does, the best she knows how: she leans in and kisses him, not softly at all, not chastely at all. She winds her fingers through the short hair at the back of his head and tugs, she presses her body against his and rolls her hips, and he gasps. 

“Jean,” he says, low and raspy, and she shivers in response. “My Jean,” Lucien says, and if he’d had some misguided notion about being gentlemanly, it has faded. He touches her hips, her breast, her collarbone. He kisses her mouth, her cheek, her neck, sucking hard at her pulsepoint. He’ll leave a mark and she wants him to, just like she hopes to leave traces of herself on him. The vows, the ring, they matter so much, but so does this, the binding together of bodies that makes a marriage real.

Mine, mine, mine, she thinks, as she strips him out of his jacket and tie, pressing her tongue to the piece of smooth skin under his shirt collar. He turns her roughly then, attacking the buttons on her dress with shaky fingers, and she regrets the choice a little for how long it takes for him to finish. 

But everything is fast after that, the last pieces of clothing discarded on the floor, the tumble into the bed, Lucien’s breath against warm her body. Show me, he said, and she does: trailing her hands over every piece of him she can reach, pressing her breasts to his mouth, spreading her legs in invitation when he looks up for permission.

“Please,” she says at that searching glance. She falls in love a little more at the unneeded pause, the affirmation that despite his wild eyes and raging heart, he will not take what is not offered. “Lucien, please,” she says, desperate with the reality of him. She will learn soon if he likes to tease as much as she hates to wait, but not now: now he pushes forward and joins them together.

“Don’t hold back,” she whispers as he starts to move. They will learn this dance, how to please, how to share, how to give and take, but right now, she wants only his need, for that is all she has to give. 

“Never,” he gasps, and thrusts his hips as their first pas a deux begins in earnest. 

It was, she thinks sometime later, worth the wait.

***


End file.
